They Talk About Monsters – And Lock Up Families. The Lies of Donald Trump

Donald Trump calls them “the worst of the worst.” He speaks of rapists, murderers, child abusers – as if in recent years an army of evil had slipped across the border, led by gang bosses and demons in human form. What follows is a language of fear. And a policy that does not protect – but destroys. Because while Trump talks about monsters on stage, reality tells a completely different story. ICE, the U.S. immigration agency, has arrested and detained tens of thousands of people in recent months. People without weapons, without criminal records, without crimes. People who hadn’t done anything to anyone. By the end of June, more than 57,000 people were held in ICE detention. Over 40,000 of them had not a single criminal conviction. More than 16,500 were held without any charges pending against them. And even among those who were accused of something, only a tiny fraction – 161 – had committed a violent crime. Most were arrested for minor issues – unpaid tickets, missing immigration documents, administrative offenses. In Trump’s story, they come to kill. In reality, they came to live. Then there are entirely fabricated stories, like that of Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, who was presented to the public as a high-ranking member of MS-13. We took on the case at the time and were able to achieve that he has now since been released. See: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/der-schattenmann-the-shadow-man/ and https://kaizen-blog.org/en/ein-kleiner-sieg/ https://kaizen-blog.org/der-schattenmann-the-shadow-man/ and https://kaizen-blog.org/ein-kleiner-sieg/

Then there are fabricated stories about dismantled pedophile rings, like “Operation Restore Justice” – a title that sounds grand. A rescue operation said to have saved the lives of 115 children. A heroic moment of American justice, a shining symbol of good. But what pretends to be a beacon is nothing more than a will-o’-the-wisp. Our most in-depth investigations – supported by inquiries and conversations with other journalists – can confirm only two actual rescue cases. Two children, two stories, in separate incidents, with at least a somewhat good ending – if that’s even still the right word. – Real, verifiable. And then? A silence that is deafening. Where are the other 113 children? Numbers without faces, success stories without proof. It’s as if someone in an office decided that 115 sounded better than two. A statistic as hollow as the promise of justice it claims to embody. But reality has no place in this system anymore. Since Trump’s return to office, the numbers have been manipulated like in a bad stage play. Stephen Miller, Trump’s gray eminence in the White House, imposed a daily quota on the agency at the end of May: 3,000 arrests per day – regardless of origin, guilt, or logic. In Los Angeles, entire neighborhoods were cleared out. In Texas, ICE searched kindergartens, hospitals, industrial parks. A suspicion was enough. A skin color. An accent. The official line reads: “focused on serious criminals.” But anyone who looks closely sees the opposite. Internal data show that 84 percent of those detained weren’t even assigned a threat level – because there was nothing to assess. No risk. No reason for concern. Nothing – except the wrong passport.

What Trump delivers is not safety. It is spectacle. A show that relies on isolated cases and abuses them to justify a system that tramples on human rights. There is the story of Laken Riley, a murdered student, beaten to death by a Venezuelan man who was in the country illegally. Tragic, yes. But not a reason to imprison tens of thousands of innocent people. Not a reason to tear families apart just because they exist. Trump named a law after her. The “Laken Riley Act” requires ICE to detain people even on mere suspicion of theft. Suspects – not convicts. It is a law against the presumption of innocence, against fairness, against the spirit of the Constitution. And it is working: never before have so many people been held in immigration detention without trial. Yet studies have shown for years: immigrants are not more criminal than Americans. On the contrary. They are less likely to be incarcerated, less likely to be violent, almost invisible in the statistics. And yet they are treated as a threat – because it’s politically convenient. Because fear wins votes. And because the system tolerates no dissent.But the truth cannot be stopped. It stands in the public squares where volunteers hold up signs with the faces of the disappeared. It lives in the voices of lawyers who rescue families week after week because some officer decided their daily quota wasn’t met. And it whispers through the walls of detention centers where people are being held who never should have been there in the first place. We currently have well over 450 cases on our desks, over 300 previously processed, including people we had to track down whom a judge later acquitted. What’s happening in the United States is a drama beyond compare – and once you are inside it, the full extent becomes visible. It is a quiet truth – but it is stronger than any lie. And one day, people will ask how a president was able to deceive an entire nation by claiming he wanted to deport the worst of the worst – and ended up only targeting the weakest.

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